Saturday, August 20, 2016

Why be Apologetic about Your Art? Stand Erect. Let the System make Changes

One day a young artist was showing some of his works to me.
Well versed in Kangra miniature style, this artist held out some future
promises though his answer to one of my questions made me doubtful about his
future promise. It was not really his answer but the way he answered had put me
off for my question was as simple as a query about the medium of his works. Externalizing
his hesitation and moral trepidation by scratching the back of his head and by
shuttling his eyes restively around my face he said, “Poster colours on mount
board.” I was sad, to say the least. I told him, “Never hesitate in answering a
question regarding your work. Do not be apologetic about your work at all. The
moment you are apologetic about your own creation people grow suspicious about
your intentions. If you know what you are doing or rather what you have done,
and also if you know the medium that you have chosen to do the work, be confident
and say it straight for no medium is a bad medium for an artist. And above all,
doing a work of art never amounts to committing a crime.”

This chance encounter on a discussion table in an art
promoter’s office forced me wear my thinking cap for a while. I thought of the
other extreme of this young artist; the ‘over confident’ young artist. Such
artists are aplenty and in the market place they are seen as happening and
successful. These artists say whatever comes to their tongues. Sometimes they
know their answers for sure and they do not have any hesitation to say it out.
They know their subject matter and also they know their mediums. Ironically,
such overconfidence of the artists also has put me into a state of inexplicable
grief. Experience has taught me that those young artists too sure of their
works have somehow matured before time and their works appear as close ended.
There is a feeling of ‘that’s it’. And when you have that feeling it is followed
by this line, ‘so, let’s look somewhere else for something interesting.’ Early
bloomers have always presented this sense of dejection amongst the viewers.
Each time they make an extremely confident and conclusive work of art, they are
posed with another gigantic challenge either to maintain the present momentum
or to go beyond it to present something new. Slowly, such artists give us
dettol washed, sanitized works of art with predictable or predicated narratives
around it. The smarter ones amongst these overconfident early bloomers, when
they face with far more intelligent questions or even confront their own weak
moments in public spaces of presentation, they shrug their shoulders and say, ‘well,
I don’t know.’ Call it height of arrogance or height of ignorance, I think such
artists sell their confidence, definitely not their art for their art fail to
impress seasoned minds like mine.

Why does this happen? Or how does it happen? What makes a
young artist mumble incoherently and sound apologetic about his or her works?
What makes another young artist say things confidently by tying up the loose
ends or just leave the ends completely opened so that anybody could say anything
without holding the artist responsible for their conclusions? Till recently we
used to think that the disparity was created by the language. English being the
language of political as well as economic power, being conversant in that language
gives an artist a natural passport to recognition if not stardom. If both evade
the artist then he/she could at least float in the right kind of circles and
make right kind of connections which would eventually take him/her to
materialistic success. Those who do not speak English (who are known amongst
the English speaking crowd as vernies, a condescending abbreviation for
vernacular) are destined to be second class citizens in the hierarchic
structure of the art scene in India. However, I have come to understand that it
is not the language alone that determines the confidence level of the artist.
For an artist, say from Tamil Nadu does not need fluency in English to tell
someone that his medium is either ‘oil on canvas’ or ‘poster colour on paper’.
He/she just needs to understand what is being asked. If someone wants to know
further about the works or about the artist who is not conversant in English,
he would definitely find an interlocutor; that’s the way we watch movies with
subtitles and read international literature in translation.

The confidence level of an artist lies in elsewhere; his/her
understanding of the world. The smarter ones use a lot of art historical name
droppings. The more you drop names from contemporary art scene of certain
countries or from remote art historical annals which are not regularly visited
even by the art people, the more security rings will be created around you.
People use art history as a weapon to intimidate the inquisitive minds, which
perhaps is a legitimate way because a scientist upon questioning would
definitely drop theorems beyond our grasping power to save his skin or a pandit
would drop some Sanskrit or Arabic couplets to floor the opponent or the
general enthusiast. But the smarter ones amongst the young contemporary artists
function not really based on art history, which is too academic for them to
handle. Selecting a special area of knowledge and information which are currently
in parlance but not among the generic crowds but only in the specialized groups
of people helps these artists to remain special and invincible for the time
being. Look at those artists including the Raqs Media group and the artists who
are enamoured by such art or artists collective. They operate in special
intellectuals zones and claim that only those people who are intellectually at
the same wave length could understand their art. It is almost like saying that
only a botanist could understand a flower. A poet is a fool because what he
says about a flower is not ‘the flower’.

Seeing such kind of art and artists flourishing or getting
recognition and fortune, many youngsters who are still using conventional
mediums like painting, sculpting, print making , photography with focus and so
on think that they are some kind of sinners who are simply gate crashers in an
elite scene and any act of theirs caught under the light should be explained
apologetically and talked about with a lot of hesitation. To remove this
disparity and injustice from the art scene, I would suggest that there should
be a fundamental change in the art curriculum of our fine arts academies. With
periodical syllabus revisions and academic assessment and so on, the fine arts
faculties in India try to be abreast with the times but they are not seeing the
truth yet. We have a vertically divided teaching practice; on the one side we
have practical training (polishing skills) and the other side we have art
history and theory. As they say, East and West never meet, skills, history and
theory never gel, however the teachers try to create bridges between these two
or three disciplines. Another interesting factor is that there is also a
horizontal division in our art teaching systems. In this horizontal division
theory tries to cut across both conventional practices and conventional art
history, and tries to bring them in the same line without emphasising either
practice or history. Such hybrid educational systems are followed by the prime
institutions like Arts and Aesthetics Department of the Jawaharlal Nehru
University and Ambedkar University and so on.

It is important to take stock of the output of these
institutions. UGC is the only constitutional agency to which these institutions
are accountable and answerable. They cannot be made accountable to any other
agency for their academic nature. But when we check the output we understand
that these institutions have not produced neither artists nor art historians or
art experts. These institutions do not give any course curatorial practices;
but the graduates from these schools become automatically curators. This
alchemy happens because of the horizontal entry of theory into the art scene in
India. A majority of the teachers who teach in these institutions are not
qualified to teach contemporary art for their specializations are in ancient
arts. Does anyone sign a consent form for heart surgery if the doctor is an MD
in Orthopaedics? We don’t But in art we
do. That’s why someone who is a doctorate in Mughal miniatures could give lectures
on performance art. It happens only in India.

Unfortunately, in India we have created a Brahminical
division among the students of art by these vertical and horizontal divisions.
We have students who call Sri Rama Pattabhishekam or Coronation of Rama by Raja
Ravi Varma as the ‘wedding photo of Rama’ when their visual sense is tested
during the entrance interview. We also have students who have just spent a
couple of summers in Paris visiting museums and have come back to join a course
in art. So who is going to survive in this? Students with artistic
determination mostly come from middle and lower middle classes. Their confidence
to survive is shattered either by this imbalances in the educational system or
by the disparities that they face later on in their practical lives. In my
view, these disparities could be done away with to a large extent provided if
we change the way we teach art history and theory to students. We have just changed
some cosmetic changes; JNU does not call art history, art history. They call it
something else because art history is old fashioned. We have incorporated film
studies, theatre studies, Dalit studies, Feminism and so on in the curriculum,
but I say to no effect. Students are not to be taught or informed. They are to
be made live art history, theory and other branches of knowledge.

How is it possible? Let me introduce my way of looking at it
and suggest certain changes in the academic learning. First of all, we need to
weed out all confusions pertaining to the art teaching and practicing within
the academies. No art faculty in this country should tell their students that
they could become artists if they have a knowledge base but no skills. The
post-modern liberalism has approved that anybody is an artist. It is a false
theory. This false theory is created by the capitalists in the world so that
they could make the rich and powerful to do things the way they want. A singer
is a singer when he sings well. Anybody is not a singer only because one has
some theoretical know how of singing. Also our academic curriculum for artists
should give a lot of stress to skill, imagination and design. These sessions
should be soulful than mechanical. Art history teaching should create links
between what is taught and what is practiced. The theories, if not leading
students anywhere should be discarded. Art should be taught with professional
precision. Art history should break its linear tendencies and should go for
reverse methodologies, leading students from contemporary history to the
histories of yester years. And above all, the students should be given lectures
on socio-political and cultural histories of India. Academies that call their
fine arts as liberal arts these days create courses and produce graduates with
specializations that none needs particularly for any use. Instead, the liberal
histories should be incorporated as an integral part of art course. When a
student comes of the college as a fresh graduate, he or she should be ready to
face the world like an artist who is unapologetic about what he or she does. To
face this world, one needs not just artistic skills but the knowledge of
politics, economics, ecology, society and the ways in which it works and
culture. They should be prepared to understand that art does not happen in
vacuum. They also should be made to learn that artists are the last people
standing even when the world goes down on its knees before avarice and
philistinism. Artists should be taught to become the greatest humanitarians in
the world. When artist learns to stands for the universe, he gains all the
confidence and to stand for the universe needs to the backing of an integrated
understanding of his or her world. Today our academies are incapable of
producing such graduates. It is high time that they change their course.

3 comments:

"A majority of the teachers who teach in these institutions are not qualified to teach contemporary art for their specializations are in ancient arts. Does anyone sign a consent form for heart surgery if the doctor is an MD in Orthopaedics? We don’t But in art we do. That’s why someone who is a doctorate in Mughal miniatures could give lectures on performance art. It happens only in India. "

Not only these two(mentioned in the article) institution...I think maximum numbers of institutions has the same kind of teacher. It's really painful.

That Kangra miniature guy could have just been shy and introverted. If not then there is no reason to be ashamed of any medium. I also think no canons can be made on how an artist should be or should not be. Moreover, no one can teach anyone to be the greatest humanitarian of the world and to stand for the universe, thats just wishful thinking.

True, unneeded art historical name-dropping is quite prevalent in the art scene. You also mentioned that it is legitimate as a scientist would definitely drop theorems to save his skin! However, there are scientists who specifically work towards explaining jargon free scientific principles to the uninitiated.